Spacewar Ending in Astoria

Posted on February 27, 2013 by MsSusanB

Replica of the round CRT and game controllers developed at MIT in 1962 to run Spacewar on DEC’s PDP-1, the first commercial interactive computer. Note input-output typewriter.

It’s all aliens, flying saucers, galaxies, and other worlds inside the Museum of the Moving Image’s tribute to gaming history, Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off, soon ending in Queens.

The big, expansive dark gallery is a gamer’s dream, with flashing lights, arcade consoles, virtual headgear, and wall-sized projections distributed around the room. Last weekend, enthusiastic museum-goers were happily roaming through the space, enjoying the please-touch experience of interacting with 20 historic video games from the last 50 years. Yes, they all work!

The show begins with a reverential replica of the game that started it all in 1962 at MIT, Spacewar, the first virtual intergalactic battle in deep space. Check out the story of SpaceWar, a slick, fun video created by the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. (Spoiler alert: it involves model railroading.) If you want to read more, here are links to the 1972 Rolling Stone article that predicted that computer gaming was going to take off in big ways.

Child waits turn as museum-goer enjoys Galaxy Force II, Sega’s 1988 arcade game built upon a flight-simulator cabinet.

The museum did not feel compelled to arrange its time-machine arcade in chronological fashion, and it’s fun switching back and forth among the different technologies. You’ll find Atari’s 1979 Asteroids arcade unit is next to Nintendo’s 2009 Super Mario Galaxy II and Atari’s 1982 home console for Yar’s Revenge. There’s even the 2009 iPad game Osmos.

No one has to wait very long to step up and play, although there was tiny queue for Space Invaders, the 1972 arcade sensation that was one of the earliest microprocessor-based units. Dads were having fun explaining to kids exactly why it didn’t fire as fast as games they have at home.

Leave that light saber app holstered, and get to Astoria to relive what it was like the first time you fought in space. Note: Admission gets each person four complimentary arcade tokens, but you can always buy more.

Sarongs in Winter

Posted on February 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view of woman’s cotton sarong incorporating Chinese-style cranes, probably from the workshop of Mrs. Wilemse (1890-1910). Central Java, Indonesia

It’s the smallest show right now at The Met. It doesn’t even have its own web site. If you’re on the way to see Matisse on the First Floor, pause to take a close-up look at some marvels of the textile collection and imagine you’re on the faraway Indonesian island of Java in the micro-show, Resistance and Splendor in Javanese Textiles.

The curators have framed a collection of textile masterworks from that exotic corner of the world, mostly sarongs. If you read the label copy, the series of textiles embellished in the resist-dye technique evoke quite a bit of the recent history of Indonesia.

Everyone knows batik, but you may not know that it was cultivated as an export by the Dutch in colonial times on Java (formerly Dutch East Indies). Or that there were workshops whose fabric designs were as identifiable in 1890s Java as 1990s Versace prints are to us.

Small detail of wrapper in Hokokau style (early-mid 1940s). Traditional motifs on diagonal with European-style flowers.

As demand grew throughout the 20^th century, designs changed, adhering to tastes of foreign buyers, even while the resist-dye masters kept mashing in the iconography of ancient Javenese royalty. As the curators mention, it’s particularly poignant that some of the most intricate, beautiful resist-dye textiles were made under the difficult WWII Japanese occupation of Indonesia. Apparently cotton shortages allowed the master craftsmen to spend more time perfecting elaborate techniques.

The intricacy, dynamism, and history of this textile display is something you really need to see up close. Thank you, Ratti Textile Center vault.

Virtual Ancestor Cornered in High-Tech Tree by AMNH

Posted on February 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

Carl Buell’s rendering of the hypothetical placental ancestor, a small insect-eating animal. Source: AMNH

Who says dinosaurs get all the attention?

One of the big front-page science stories of the last few weeks is that a global team of researchers has mapped our ancestor tree back in time to a hypothetical small, furry critter that emerged just after the dinosaurs went extinct. The big news is that through a giant high-tech, data-crunching technique, 15-20 molecular-data scientists collaborating in six countries around the world figured out that the hypothetical ancestor to nearly all the mammals alive today emerged 200,000 to 400,000 years after the comet crashed to Earth 65 million years ago.

Ok, it wasn’t the first mammal (the ancestor to platypuses, opossums, kangaroos, and a lot of other extinct things came much earlier), but let’s applaud the American Natural History Museum for telling this story so clearly to a writer at The New York Times that it made it to the front page.

Column on AMNH Fourth Floor exhibit space that marks the spot where the virtual critter emerged along the evolutionary pathway in the Hall of Primitive Mammals.

At Thursday’s Social Media Week event on how to tell stories in science, panelists repeatedly emphasized how hard it is to make clarity emerge from a morass of data. In a way, this “story about the rat” reached a social-media science storytelling trifecta: over 240 comments “about the rat” on the NYT web site, a neat little video that’s racked up over 11,000 views in just two weeks, and an exhibition layout for the vertebrate paleo collection on the museum’s Fourth Floor that lets you stand in the exact spot on the evolutionary pathway where this tiny hypothetical ancestor emerged. (See the photo with the Giant Sloth, to the left.)

Great job, AMNH and Stony Brook storytellers for giving us this video view into deep time, showing how MorphoBank crunches data, and creating another social-media star out of a virtual ball of fur.

PS: The fossil background talent in this video appears to be a model of Gobiconodon, an actual Cretaceous mammal from 110 million years ago who’s not directly related to the star of this show, but looks good on camera.

How to Collect Exotic Oversized Jewelry

Posted on February 22, 2013 by MsSusanB

Teke style cordiform pendant (Turkmenistan, mid- to late 19th c.), silver, fire-gilded and chased with niello inlay, decorative wire, and table-cut carnelians

Take a peek at the accessories that two intrepid travelers spent years collecting in Central Asia and Iran – oversized jewelry that was so big they had to display it on a wall. Now that Marshall and Marilyn Wolf have donated their collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met has given it the star treatment, way up in that tiny magical Gallery 458 in the Islamic Art wing (which just welcomed its 1 millionth visitor a few weeks ago).

The dazzling show displays the 19^th and 20^th century creations of Turkmen craftsmen, whose ancestors roamed across Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and northeastern Iran.

Although Marshall and Marilyn Wolf collected jewelry and ceremonial objects of four tribal styles, the Met’s show spotlights Teke style from Merv, a Turkmenistan city-oasis that was a major hub along the ancient Silk Road. The collectors fell in love with the dynamic pieces – crowns, pendants, pectorals, armbands, rings, and long, vertical ornaments that flowed down braids on the backs of Central Asian beauties. Recent craftsmen may use glass instead of semiprecious stones and carnelian, but in all the vitrines on the Met’s second floor, you’ll see the real thing.

Installation view with matching silver armlets (bilezik), whip, and double-finger matchmaker’s ring with turquoise and carnelians.

Take a close-up look at the Met’s spectacular collection photos. When you click on an image, the Met also shows you different views and similar objects from its collection.

Take three minutes to hear Marshall and Marilyn Wolf talk about their passion, how and why they began their collection, explain how their gift plugged a hole in the Met’s own holdings, and show more of their truly stunning pieces. Keep an eye on that second-floor gallery for more to come.

Inhale…The MAD Exhibit They Won’t Let You See

Posted on February 19, 2013 by MsSusanB

There’s nothing to see…only to experience…in The Art of Scent 1889-2012 currently at the Museum of Art and Design. Designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition space is completely bare, save for gentle depressions pressed into the wall where visitors can lean in and experience fragrances considered masterworks of innovation and complexity.

Thank you to curator Chandler Burr for paying tribute to the artists that created these scents. The earliest is Jicky, created by Guerlain in 1889 when the Eiffel Tower was on the rise, the first designer fragrance to use synthetic components.

Walking through these design innovations is an experience you won’t forget. Can you tell that a 1980s fragrance was inspired by the smell of laundry detergent (the essence of “clean”)? Do you agree with Prada’s 1990s take on the romanticism of the 19^th century? Do you think Untitled by Daniela Andrier for Margiela in 2010 combines “excitement and unease”, as MAD purports?

MAD has many videos to let you in on the process behind the ephemeral. Listen as Jean-Marc Chaillon discusses what it’s like to create something that can’t be touched:

Ever wonder about the work that goes into designing a celebrity fragrance? Listen in on this enlightening and entertaining curator’s panel on the design and structure of olfactory art:

Look Up to See Where Your Grandmother’s Clothes Came From

Posted on February 16, 2013 by MsSusanB

West 35th Street in 1938, looking east between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Source: NYC Department of Records, Municipal Archives

It can seem a little quiet walking over to Mood these days. Not too long ago, the streets above 34^th Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues were clogged with push boys, wheeling racks of materials, trims, and fashions among jobbers, contractors, accessory importers, fabric stores, and showrooms. The way it used to be comes alive in the Skyscraper Museum’s show (closing today) Urban Fabric: Building New York’s Garment District.

In its heyday, those 18 blocks just north and west of Macy’s produced 75% of all US women’s and children’s clothes. The exhibit tells the story of how this bustling hive happened. In a nutshell, the old sweatshops in tenement buildings gave way to factory loft spaces in the 1890s around the area where NYU is today. When the big department stores emerged along Sixth Avenue and 23^rd Streets, the lofts came with them. But the congestion proved to be a bit much for the female shoppers, who were disturbed by the throngs of guys loitering about on their lunch breaks, and the retailers took action.

The department stores (like Macy’s and Lord & Taylor) moved above 34^th Street. To prevent the factory lofts from overwhelming them again, the City implemented the first zoning ordinance in America in 1916. The garment makers, closed out of the fancy retail neighborhood, started razing the Tenderloin District on the West Side and erecting architect-designed skyscrapers (like the Fashion Tower on West 36^th) from that point on. About 125 buildings went up on those 18 blocks before the Depression hit.

Here’s a glimpse of what it was like in 1952:

As recently as the 1970s, carts were still being shuttled through the narrow streets, but we know how that story ended. Today, no one even looks up at the entrances, set-backs, lobbies, or embellishments of these once grand hubs where models, marketers, Mad Men, laborers, seamstresses, teamsters, pattern makers, the designers co-mingled.

Interestingly enough, not a single building is landmarked. In fact, the Skyscraper Museum had trouble even finding photographs of the original buildings and had to turn to historic adverts and early brochures on factory electricity.

For the full, fascinating story by the curator who unearthed it all, listen to Andrew Dolkart of Columbia University, and watch his slide show:

Interns and staff built a nice model of the buildings lining 37^th Street for the show, and a big thank you to The Skyscraper Museum for (again) putting the history and installation walkthrough on line. Tell your friends, and be sure to look up next time you walk over to Mood.

If You Love Brooklyn, Get to GO!

Posted on February 14, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view of Yeon Ji Yoo’s The Fight (2012), made of paper, paper pulp, acetate, glue, packing tape, cheesecloth, plastic flowers, recycled plastic bottles and bags

Tucked away in the Mezzanine Gallery on the second floor at the Brooklyn Museum is a valentine to the borough, its artists, and the support and love they received last September in Go: A Community-Curated Open Studio Project. It mixed trudging around Brooklyn, democracy in action, and high-tech to peer into other worlds right in our own backyard.

The museum commissioned an app, asked artists to open their studios, and invited the world to visit and vote for their favorites. (Apparently, it was inspired by an art competition organized out of Grand Rapids!)

GO tracked the art makers and art seekers – take a look at the “weekend activity heatmap” and the other GPS-gathered stats. The results showed a lot of love – 18,000 visitors making 147,000 studio visits to about 1,700 artists over a two-day period, or about eight studio visits per participant. See the raw data for yourself, broken out by neighborhood. Learn a bit more about the voters here.

Art lovers nominated 9,457 artists for a museum showing, and eventually voting and curators whittled it down to five spectacular representatives. Interestingly, four on display were born outside the United States.

Yeon Ji Yoo of South Korea, currently lives in Greenpoint and works in Red Hook. The large installation piece in the show is inspired by her grandmother’s fading memory. Listen as she talks about growing up in South Korea’s rural countryside:

Installation view of Naomi Safran-Hon’s Home Invasion (2011). Archival inkjet print, lace, and cement on canvas

Naomi Safran Hon (of Prospect Heights) prints photographs of her hometown of Haifa, Israel on canvas; makes some cuts in the image; and pushes cement through lace to make a 3-D effect. She feels she’s working out the push/pull of the political and domestic realities of where she grew up. But let her tell you:

Meet the other artists, too: urban watercolorist Adrian Coleman, and painters Oliver Jeffers, and Gabrielle Watson. But if you really love Brooklyn, get over to experience the work in person, and add your comments. The museum’s open late on Thursday.

Thin, Rich, and MAD Embrace of the Middle East

Posted on February 12, 2013 by MsSusanB

Martin Munkácsi photo of Doris in an ensemble that is in the exhibition. Source: Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Historical Archives, Duke University.

Walking into MAD’s soon-to-close exhibit, Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art, what do you see? An architect’s model of a small palace by the sea, dazzling objects that adorned it, exotic loungewear inspired by faraway ports of call, Vogue-worthy jewelry, and photographs of a young socialite/philanthropist consulting with master craftsmen in busy Iranian and Moroccan workshops off the world’s most ancient streets.

As you examine these bits and pieces of Shangri La and its history, there’s a single vision that emerges – a portrait of a woman who knew about light, color, beauty, form, design, artistry, history, and had the vision, passion, and resources to put it all together in a way that any interior designer, fashionista, curator, and global traveler would envy.

Here’s the story line: In 1935, Doris Duke fell in love, went on a round-the-world honeymoon with James Cromwell, and fell in love again – with the exotic sights, sounds, patterns, textures, and artisanal wonders of the Middle East. Followed everywhere by reporters, she and James sojourned for months through Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and the Indian subcontinent, marveling at the dazzling historic architecture, sinuous designs, luxurious carpets, lattice metalwork, colorful tile, and bejeweled ornament.

Tim Street-Porter’s photo of Doris’s dining room at Shangri La (2011) Source: DDFIA

She just had to have it, and when she and James landed in Hawaii, she knew that no home in Palm Beach was going to cut it. They bought an ocean-view lot on the Big Island and began constructing a dream house. Her architects hewed to her vision — to create a seaside home into a tribute to the Islamic architecture and design that thrilled her imagination.

They brought artists and designers in from Iran, Syria, India, and Morocco to work on the home, and Doris herself traveled went back to check on progress in the home-country workshops and buy more. Eventually, she amassed one of the largest private collections of Islamic art in the world. Peruse her collecting timeline.

The actual home (now christened Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art) is now open to the public. Take time to explore Shangri La on the virtual tour. It hosts not only a 2,500-item collection, but thought-provoking installations by contemporary artists. (So does the show.) Here’s a video of artist Shahzia Sikander sharing what it felt like to project her light installations on this magical dream house.

For more history, watch the curators’ video. Doris’s vision, taste, and style will be on view at MAD for a few more days, then tour museums across the country.

You’ll never walk through the Islamic Wing at The Met again without thinking, “What would Doris do with this?”

What Seinfeld Ate for Lunch

Posted on February 9, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view of the pie section of the historic Automat

If you’re a New Yorker, you eat the same stuff – Chinese take out, sushi, hero sandwiches, and the occasional power lunch. So, where did it come from? How long have these New York traditions been going on? Did you know that take-out began in 1976?

Get to see the New York Public Library’s walk-through of culinary history at Lunch Hour NYC. As soon as you enter, you see a reproduction of the oyster carts that fed millions of working New Yorkers in the early 1800s, when these small bites were so plentiful in our waters that entrepreneurs made fortunes shipping them to Paris and London.

Installation view of homemaker recipes

You’ll also see tribute paid to the ubiquitous Chinese take-out bike, learn that pretzels have been sold on street corners for 150 years, and meet the creator of the stainless steel hot dog cart, Ed Beller. Listen to his story yourself.

Of course, the genuine star of the show is the Automat wall. You not only get a glimpse of the original doors, but you can go around behind the scenes and see where workers put in the fresh creamed spinach, baked beans, beef with burgundy sauce, and pie. People tend to linger in this section of the show, watching videos of Marlo Thomas in That Girl, a career girl without a lot of cash eyeing the yummier selections chosen by more successful types – a theme that’s also echoed in the clips from other movies, too.

Nostalgia lovers will be delighted to see a vintage Frigidere, a wall full of lunch boxes, and an array of 1950s and 1960s homemaker recipe booklets, and to learn that dieting crazes go back for decades. (Favorite: the article “Nice People Don’t Eat” from a 1941 Ladies Home Journal.) There’s also a 1940s Betty Crocker book with open to an article that any New Yorker would find comforting: “Meals at Odd Hours.” Watch the NYPL’s lively video promo:

Get a close-up look with these photos on Flickr.

Installation view of Alex Gard’s portraits at Sardi’s – Lorenz Hart, Dorothy Kilgallen, Al Capp, and John McClain. Collection: NYPL

NYPL has a terrific Automat-themed website, filled with revelations. Go read about how cafeterias began in 1898 at 130 Broadway, how peanut butter began in 1900, how Alex Gard did all those portraits at Sardi’s in exchange for dinners on a regular basis, and how NYPL needs volunteers to transcribe its collection of historic menus. (Go sign up.)

Meet The Building You Didn’t Know at NYHS

Posted on February 6, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view featuring photos of the Whitehall Building (17 Battery Place), Grand Central Terminal, the Free Public Baths (538 East 11th), and the interior of the Plaza Hotel

In one of the most deceptively simple installations at the New-York Historical Society, visitors can’t stop looking, reading, absorbing, talking, and pointing. The Landmarks of New York show was humming all last weekend, with exhibition goers moving up and down the staid second-floor hallway, quietly moving from photo to photo learning stuff about buildings they’ve seen a million times.

Did you ever think the entire history of New York could be told in 90 identically framed photographs? Take a look at a few of the 1,287 landmarked buildings in NYC. Since the NYHS web site does not contain any of these buildings’ compelling stories, run up to their second floor before the show closes.

The show pays tribute the 1965 Landmarks Law and resulting Landmarks Commission, established in the wake of the greatest architectural disaster in the history of the modern City – the 1963 destruction of the historic Penn Station. Today, 30,000 structures are protected, and the photos show you some of the exteriors, interiors, and scenic landmarks of our five boroughs.

Installation view of John Bowne House (1661) photo by Jeanne Hamilton

Which are the oldest? The Wyckoff House, built sometime before 1641, at 5816 Clarendon Road, Brooklyn, and the oldest surviving home in Queens, the 1661 John Bowne House. The label copy says that Bowne had a huge flare-up with Peter Stuyvesant over his ban on the Quaker religion (actually, he was arrested), which led Bowne to lend his sliver of Flushing to regular meetings of the Quaker community.

Nothing in Manhattan even come close, although 1764 St. Paul’s Chapel is the oldest surviving church. Did you know it was modeled upon St. Martin-in-the-Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square?

This exhibit is packed with story after story of places you pass all the time. Charlie Parker’s Residence at 151 Avenue B is a landmark, partly because Charlie lived there between 1950-1954, but also because Franz Kline did, too.

Lucky for us, that the City has posted all of the Historic District Maps for each borough. Or go to the interactive city map and click on “Landmarks” to see what’s in your neighborhood. Who knew Greenpoint has the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District? Adventures await. Get to know a building.

itsnewstoyou

Susan B's advice on what you shouldn't miss in NYC and other museums

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